We were walking down George’s Street recently and noticed the vegetarian restaurant Juice had been replaced by a place called San Lorenzo’s. The menu on display in the window read very well and I decided to do a bit of research when I got home to see if it was worth a visit. It turns ...

Naturally, there are a lot of pumpkins around at this time of year but it can be surprisingly hard to find a good one that has decent flavour. For starters, any of the beasts you see in the supermarket are useless as they taste of nothing and are only of decorative value; I generally find ...

As mentioned recently I got a shoulder of wild boar from the excellent John’s Meat Company in Monkstown: a large 5kg bone-in joint with the sort of marbling that unfortunately has been bred out of commercial pigs. Obviously as it was whole I had to debone the cut myself which was actually fine; I took ...

When I was in Verona awhile back I visited a fantastic shop selling all sorts of salume and cheeses; I found a beautiful cotechino which we had for New Year’s as is the tradition (with Castelluccio lentils I brought back as well) but something else we bought were white and black truffle slices in oil. ...

This recipe was inspired by a really good main course we had in Coppinger Row at the start of the summer, a normal meatball and linguine dish was given a great twist by using mint instead of the usual basil in the tomato sauce. I’ve swapped the beef with lamb given its affinity for mint ...

This recipe is based on is the classic Pulgian dish Orecchiette alle Cime di Rapa which involves turnip tops and pasta being coated in an sauce made with absurd amounts of garlic, anchovies and olive oil; the reason I like it so much is because it’s such a great example of Southern Italian cucina povera, ...

Another trip to the Phoenix Park to get more wild garlic also yielded a great haul of nettles, far more than I got last time so I had to figure a way of using them up; I was reminded of a lovely meal I had in Croatia a few years back that featured nettle gnocchi ...

After such a long and harsh winter it’s nice to see that spring is finally here, the days have got longer and the bitter cold of the past few months finally seems to have passed; the hungry gap of March is over and there’s lots of great vegetables starting to come into season. Something I’ve ...

We had some fennel leftover from a risotto I made this week and I figured since the spring lamb season is upon us again I’d combine the two. I generally much prefer lamb from the end of summer or coming into autumn that’s had a chance to graze on pasture because it has a more ...

I’ve had a few people say to me before that chicken and pasta are never paired in dishes in Italy and if we’re talking about topping with a full chicken breast for no reason other than to add some protein to the meal then they’re right. But I definitely remember eating the combination in my ...